Machine-to Machine (M2M)/Machine Type Communications (MTC) applications are applications where machines communicate with each other directly without human intervention. Examples of applications include smart metering, safety applications, health monitoring, fleet management, data applications and remote applications.
The MTC devices can be embedded in cars, consumer electronic devices, vending devices and the like. These devices are large in number and are wide spread. The applications should communicate through widely deployed networks connecting the MTC devices to Internet forming Internet of Things (IoT). While some existing MTC deployments use short range communications, it would be ideal to use cellular networks as the cellular network infrastructure is established in a stable manner and can support a large number of MTC devices.
The MTC servers which are generating traffic and trying to connect to several MTC devices at the same time leads to overload at backhaul traffic in Radio access network (RAN) and Core Network (CN). This causes intolerable paging delay, paging miss due to resource unavailability and spectrum inefficiency. At the MTC device, receiving the unnecessary paging such as paging for other users and processing the same will reduce the battery drain. Similarly overload occurs at the network side when the MTC servers initiate concurrent data transmission to several MTC devices. As the MTC servers are connected to the core network (MME/S-GW) and the core network is connected to the eNodeB or base station, the MTC servers attempts to reach the MTC devices to establish the connection and to send the data using the common channels (Paging channel). Since resources are limited in the common channel (Paging channel), eNodeB may not accommodate all the received paging messages in a given Paging Occasion, which in turn leads to paging delay or paging miss at the UE side. Similarly at the core network side, sending the paging to all the eNodeB irrespective of UE belongs to which eNodeB will cause overload at backhaul traffic.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.